Civilian Communication

DarkTalon · Post by **DarkTalon** » 2007-05-30 03:18

I'm just throwing this out there.
but does anyone want to have a test round using the insurgency gamemode on Al Basrah, where it's sort of a "tactical role-play". what i mean is the british would have to rely on civilians to give them info regarding caches and troop movement.
for example two british jeeps would be following a civilian car taking them to a cache, OR an ambush.

another example civilians drive around in cars on roadway, occasionally stopping at checkpoints, and the british have to pull one over and get information from him, instead of just knifing him.

i'd just like to get some people together and see how well this really works out.
if anyone hosts a server and is willing to let us try this i would be very grateful.

Post by **eggman** » 2007-05-30 03:30

I love the notion of some completely whacky ideas coming out of the Civvy class .. whatever those may be.

Just don't let it get out of control or nasty cuz it's just a game and meant to be for fun. Sometimes folks lose sight of that.

A-10Warthog · Post by **A-10Warthog** » 2007-05-30 03:30

haha in testing we did this...AND ITS FREAKING FUN AS HELL! just ask anyone who was there (pvt testing, not pub beta)

Ironcomatose · Post by **Ironcomatose** » 2007-05-30 03:32

I would be down to do something like that. Sounds like fun

Desertfox · Post by **Desertfox** » 2007-05-30 03:35

Yeah it was awesome in testing, but in public the british ether think

A: OMG CIV LETS KILLZ HIM LOLOLOLOL ROFLLES
B: OMG CIV LETS KNIFZ0R HIM AND TBAGZ HIM LOLOLZ

Hfett · Post by **Hfett** » 2007-05-30 03:39

Civilians car only would be nice, they can use to drive arround, and insurgents cant use them(but they can set explosives on the civilian car) and British get penalized for destroying those cars

Hx.Clavdivs · Post by **Hx.Clavdivs** » 2007-05-30 03:48

Except for those close enought to the hummer that can read the sign in the back: "If you can read this we will open fire".

Nephrmuus · Post by **Nephrmuus** » 2007-05-30 15:58

'[R-PUB wrote:A-10WarthogPilot']haha in testing we did this...AND ITS FREAKING FUN AS HELL! just ask anyone who was there (pvt testing, not pub beta)

I've seen this in public testing. I think it just takes more time on pub before the more "advanced" tactics appear. Some cilivian was offering to show us weapon caches in public chat. I think some Brits followed him and found a cache, then the insurgents hunted down and shot the traitor ;P

That said, I am really not sure if this is a viable tactic in serious play after the beta. What if half the insurgents became traitorous civilians rather than actually fighting? Would be a short game.

Also, what if the civilians started talking on external chat (e.g. ventrilo), rather than in the public text chat, to give away secret cache locations to clan members playing Brits, so it wouldn't be a question of trusting them not to be leading you to an ambush? Surely that sort of activity would lead to a ban if discovered?

I do think, however, that some sort of collaboration mechanism is something the devs should concider adding to the insurgency mode, but having it instituted by players just seems to be an exploit. At the very least, once this has been considered properly, say for 0.6 final, it would be nice to have explicit guidelines of what is and isn't acceptable behaviour for insurgent civilians.

** EDIT **
I've already held my tongue when I got autoswitched from Insurgent to UK - just following the SLs orders, rather than just shouting out where the last caches were. Don't think many people would do that...Ho hum, I suppose the "secret" locations really aren't secret after all.

ArmedDrunk&Angry · Post by **ArmedDrunk&Angry** » 2007-05-30 16:07

When does waterboarding get added ?

Ecko · Post by **Ecko** » 2007-05-30 16:16

Haha,
this is an awesome idea.

AOD_Morph · Post by **AOD_Morph** » 2007-05-30 17:18

well i think it would be cool if when you capture a civilian a sort of scan funtion from vbf2 tells you the locations of the insurgents...or half of them or something... to simulate interrogating the civilian after detaining him

Nephrmuus · Post by **Nephrmuus** » 2007-05-30 18:06

Aye, getting intel from captured civilians seems like potentially a good idea.

Further to my earlier comments about collaborators, I thought that maybe the British could have civilian collaborators kit on their side as well. They would be identical to insurgent civilians in appearance/kit, so could be used as advanced scouts for the allied forces (they wouldn't magically know the locations of caches though). One very important side-effect of this woul be that it would be even more important not to shoot civilians, since some of them would be considered as teamkills! Perhaps insurgents wouldn't get penalised for shooting traitors - certainly they shouldn't be as constrained as the Western Democracies in this matter?

Hmm, not sure overall of the workability of this, but it gets around the problem of insurgents losing player slots when one or more of them decide to aid the enemy.

Desertfox · Post by **Desertfox** » 2007-05-30 20:18

Nephrmuus wrote:I've seen this in public testing. I think it just takes more time on pub before the more "advanced" tactics appear. Some cilivian was offering to show us weapon caches in public chat. I think some Brits followed him and found a cache, then the insurgents hunted down and shot the traitor ;P

That said, I am really not sure if this is a viable tactic in serious play after the beta. What if half the insurgents became traitorous civilians rather than actually fighting? Would be a short game.

Also, what if the civilians started talking on external chat (e.g. ventrilo), rather than in the public text chat, to give away secret cache locations to clan members playing Brits, so it wouldn't be a question of trusting them not to be leading you to an ambush? Surely that sort of activity would lead to a ban if discovered?

I do think, however, that some sort of collaboration mechanism is something the devs should concider adding to the insurgency mode, but having it instituted by players just seems to be an exploit. At the very least, once this has been considered properly, say for 0.6 final, it would be nice to have explicit guidelines of what is and isn't acceptable behaviour for insurgent civilians.

** EDIT **
I've already held my tongue when I got autoswitched from Insurgent to UK - just following the SLs orders, rather than just shouting out where the last caches were. Don't think many people would do that...Ho hum, I suppose the "secret" locations really aren't secret after all.

Whats stopping people from doing that now in .5 but instead of caches with friendly players locations?

ayjazz · Post by **ayjazz** » 2007-05-30 20:19

Collaborators sounds like a good idea, but we would have to do something to keep them from becoming free kills for the insurgents. Insurgents could care less about the Geneva Convention and all that, so they could realistically shoot them with no penalty at all. Good idea though.

[SAF]stal20048 · Post by **[SAF]stal20048** » 2007-05-30 20:44

i would love to do this, we could have a round each way, but it would have to take place on a private server.

Nephrmuus · Post by **Nephrmuus** » 2007-05-30 21:05

Desertfox wrote:Whats stopping people from doing that now in .5 but instead of caches with friendly players locations?

Nothing is stopping it, but I assume it doesn't happen any more than any side spying for another side (which means very little, if any). What I'm worried about is for insurgent civilians to act as collaborators becoming standard practice within the PR community (so far, however, I imagine it is discounted as messing about on the beta, but it seems to be very popular, so may stay in the game).

Post by **CodeRedFox** » 2007-05-30 22:54

You could change allot of game play going to one kill only (medic works). Get killed, game over. But we all know it work work in reality. Maybe just one server running this mode.

It would be really really interesting to see how every one play. Almost like an experment.

HellzxFluffyBunny · Post by **HellzxFluffyBunny** » 2007-05-30 23:00

I think it would be awesome if there were an interpetor class with a set of zip tie cuffs as a kit, and when you use it it on a civilian it shows rally points/spawn cars and SL locations on minimap for the whole squad. But you have to CATCH one. Might work if the civilian is running 20% of the time.

And I think if either side kills a civilian it should cause a 20 ticket bleed.

Sealights · Post by **Sealights** » 2007-05-30 23:03

I still think civilians should be bots, not sure if its possible, or will it make server lag. But will make teams more balanced, since there will be equal amount of insurgents fighting Brits or USMC.

Nephrmuus · Post by **Nephrmuus** » 2007-05-30 23:43

HellzxFluffyBunny wrote:I think it would be awesome if there were an interpetor class with a set of zip tie cuffs as a kit, and when you use it it on a civilian it shows rally points/spawn cars and SL locations on minimap for the whole squad. But you have to CATCH one. Might work if the civilian is running 20% of the time.

We already have this, since I believe knife-killing a civilian (which does not give the killer penalties) is supposed to be representing cuffing and capturing the civilian rather than slicing them up. I imagine the devs have postponed adding the proper graphical representation until they're sure they want this in the game or maybe they just ran out of time before 0.6 beta?